Friday, July 25, 2008

East Rock Klezmer - live at the Shoreline Jewish Festival & the Cowboy Song

Sorry folks, it's been a slow week in Teruah land. I was traveling for work and didn't have much time for blogging. On the bright side, I was interviewed by Benyamin Bresky of Israel National Radio's "The Beat" program. There were about a dozen things I wanted to talk about and actually managed to remember two of them once the interview started. Hopefully I won't sound like an idiot. Ah well. It is supposed to air this coming Tuesday. I'll let everyone know when the interview is posted to their website.

Anyway, back to the music. Today's video is of the 'East Rock Klezmer' band playing at the Shoreline Jewish Festival. The video really caught my attention, both because of the musicianship and the instrumentation. Great stuff. Nothing like a low solid bass drum line as an anchor for the otherwise swirlytwirly violin, clarinet and accordion. Very well done.

I'm also partial to this video because the East Rock gang are from my home state of Connecticut and were on my short list of bands to hire for my brother's post-wedding wedding reception. (For a variety of reasons we hired Arnie Davidson who did a fabulous job.) This video is the third of three that East Rock posted to YouTube recently. Why did am I posting video 3? They're all great but I loved the moment, about half way through the video, where someone came up to the videographer and asked if he was with the press or just some random guy filming the show. A question now caught on tape forever.

East Rock Klezmer part 3 @ Shoreline Jewish Festival

If you enjoyed this video, YouTube has video 1 and video 2 to for your viewing pleasure.

I also have to point out that the East Rock Klezmer band is near and dear to my heard for recording a "Cowboy Song." As regular readers know, I have thing for Jewish Cowboys.

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About Teruah-JewishMusic

I'm a Conservative Jew living in a Christian farm town in Michigan, USA. For me, Jewish music used to be Adon Olam, Hava Nagila, and Fiddler on the Roof. I started getting a clue a few years ago. Jewish music is Klezmer dances, Sephardic ballads and Chassidic niggun. It's thousand year old hymns, three hundred year old Shabbat table songs and 60 year old partisan resistance songs. It's contemporary hip-hop, punk rock, electronica, jazz, and chamber music. In addition to loving its musical and spiritual qualities, Jewish music helps me connect my family with a much broader and diverse Jewish culture than is available locally. The Teruah blog helps me document my exploration and share it with others. Why the name Teruah? Teruah is a call on the shofar on Rosh Hashanna.